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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumswall street pulls the strings: social security under attack in february
http://www.nationofchange.org/wall-street-pulls-strings-social-security-under-attack-february-1357655371The all-out assault on Social Security has begun.
The set-up for the big battle was the Fiscal Cliff charade. That hyped drama in the last days of December was a moment of truth for the Democratic Party and for President Barack Obama to make it clear whether they were still defenders of the New Deal legacy, or whether they were ready to toss Social Security overboard on behalf of the partys new constituency: the Wall Street gang.
The president and the Democrats in House and Senate could have said there would be no deal on the artificial Fiscal Cliff that was created by Congress back in August 2011 unless Congressional Republicans agreed not to hold the nation hostage again this February over the issue of raising the national debt ceiling. Republicans were in a weak position, since if the cliff deadline were allowed to pass, the Bush tax cuts would have expired. They would have been put in the position of being unable to pass new legislation restoring tax cuts for the wealthy, while Democrats could have forced them to pass tax cuts for those in the middle and lower classes.
Instead of doing that, the president and his vice president, former Senator from the über-corporate headquarters state of Delaware, Joe Biden, offered a compromise that give tax breaks to the 1% of Americans who earn between $250,000 and $400,000 a year, protected up to $5 million in estate value from inheritance taxes, and left the GOP free to hold Congress and the Country hostage in February and March when Congress has to pass a new increase in the debt ceiling.
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wall street pulls the strings: social security under attack in february (Original Post)
xchrom
Jan 2013
OP
gateley
(62,683 posts)1. We have to be vigilant and vocal.
leftstreet
(36,109 posts)2. Wait til the Democrats hear about this!
wait a minute...
DURec
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)3. Ding Ding Ding,have to agree.
indepat
(20,899 posts)4. BHO's tax cuts for those earning $250,000-$450,000 were much more important to the
politicians than protecting social security, Medicare, and Medicaid and the inevitability that cuts will be made among those programs to pay for those tax cuts is certain as the sun rising in the east tomorrow.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)5. They won't be called "cuts" though..
They will be disguised into something that will be applauded as "necessary for compromise." A "grand bargain" if you will...